Carphone Warehouse data breach gives hackers access to sensitive details of millions of customers

Major retailer Carphone Warehouse yesterday reported that one of its UK divisions experienced a “sophisticated cyber-attack” on Wednesday, giving hackers access to sensitive information of up to 2.4 million customers.

The data that hackers potentially got ahold of consist primarily of names, date of birth, addresses, and bank details. However, hackers seemed to only get ahold of encrypted credit information of up to 90,000 customers, which is still a staggering figure, but much less than the 2.4 million.

An executive, quoted by The Telegraph, says Carphone Warehouse is doing all it can to inform and warn affected customers:

Sebastian James, chief executive of Dixons Carphone, said: “We take the security of customer data extremely seriously, and we are very sorry that people have been affected by this attack on our systems.” “We are, of course, informing anyone that may have been affected, and have put in place additional security measures,” he added. The company said that the customer information of Currys and PC World, and “the vast majority” of Carphone Warehouse customer data is held on separate systems and has not been affected.”

The division that was hacked runs the websites OneStopPhoneShop.com, e2save.com, and Mobiles.co.uk. However, the division also operates the recently launched iD mobile network, TalkTalk Mobile, and Talk Mobile. 480,000 customers from those three operations could have been affected, too.

Keep in mind that hackers aren’t usually able to do anything with the data they steal. In most cases, the data they find about affected customers is a gateway to get pertinent information through social engineering tactics, which is the far greater threat in this breach.

With the information hackers have stolen, they are able to call you, posing as someone else, such as your bank, the government, and so on, to get sensitive information from you would not give out to anyone else.

That said, victims of this breach should be wary of any suspicious emails and phone calls trying to fish for more information.

Data breaches have become commonplace, so anywhere you divulge information to or spend money at via electronic funds (credit cards, debit cards, and etc) puts you at risk. There’s no clear way to keep customer information 100% secure, besides implementing better systems. However, even then, hackers will still find ways to breach those systems.

Carphone Warehouse will no doubt be trying to put out this fire for some time now. Let’s hope they’ve been able to properly fix the exploit and seriously focus on efforts to keep their customers data safe.

source: The Telegraph

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The After Math: Apple Music user numbers and cheap Windows 10 PCs

We’ve taken a lot of good with the bad this week. On one hand, all four major cell carriers went down in in the Southeast overnight, Samsung killed its Boxee project , Reddit banned its most famous racists, and YouTube nixed its venerable 301+ placeholder. On the plus side, Facebook started letting celebrities livestream themselves, Apple began streaming Dr Dre’s comeback album Compton (though it’s an Apple Music exclusive), Razer packed its gaming keyboards and keypads with technicolor dream lights and somebody 3D printed the most adorable teeny, tiny circular saw you’ll ever see. Slideshow-309720

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Tags: aftermath

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: hypersonic jets and spider cars

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

Airbus just unveiled its vision for the future of transportation: a 3,000MPH airplane that could travel from New York City to London in one hour flat. Meanwhile Lexus brought the future to life by debuting a working hoverboard that can soar through the air and fly over water. Tesla turned heads with an automatic electric car charger that looks like a robotic snake, while Swincar launched an amazing off-road spider car that can tackle any terrain. Stanford brought us one step closer to a solar future by revealing its new Arctan sun-powered vehicle, and China debuted an all-electric bus that can charge up in 10 seconds flat.

Japan’s energy sector is changing in the wake of the 2011 earthquake — and the nation just unveiled the world’s largest floating wind turbine off the coast of Fukushima. Meanwhile, China just broke ground on its first large-scale solar farm in the Gobi Desert. The massive project will span 6,300 acres, and it will produce enough energy for 1 million homes. Solar technology continues to advance by leaps and bounds — this week researchers unveiled a coating that can boost photovoltaic efficiency by more than 30 percent, and a new study shows that angling solar panels like butterfly wings increases energy production 50 percent.

In other news, it was a landmark week for health and wellness tech as the FDA approved the first 3D-printed drug for use in the United States. Researchers also developed a clever device that makes it easier (and less painful) to find patients’ veins, and a new Ebola vaccine was proven 100 percent effective during trials in Guinea. In wearable tech, the world’s first braille smartwatch could provide blind people with a lifeline to information, and a student developed a technique to turn fruit and vegetable waste into durable leather. Snow is probably the last thing on most people’s minds, but Dubai just announced plans to build the world’s longest indoor ski slope in the middle of the desert. And just for fun, we showed you how to make gelatin shots shaped like Lego minifigs for your next summer soirée.

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Misc, Household, Transportation, Science

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Tags: Airbus, airplane, Ebola, eco-friendly, EV, green, solar, Tesla, wind

Mars Express videos the red planet from orbit

Here’s something for those tired of looking at rock-and-dust photos of Mars: an entrancing video clip of the planet spinning taken by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express. ESA’s Mars Express mission is comprised of a lander called Beagle 2 and an orbiter, which was responsible for the video embedded below the fold. The orbiter used its Visual Monitoring Camera on May 25th and 26th, 2015 to record from an orbit close enough to make some of the planet’s surface features visible. While it’s great that we now know what Mars looks like from up close, we appreciate a dreamy full-orbital movie like this, as well.

http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/content/view/embedjw/457067

[Image credit: NASA/JPL/Corby Waste]

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MIT’s robot borrows quick reflexes from a human pilot

Based on what we’ve seen at DARPA’s Robotics challenge finals, most humanoid machines are still stiff and hilariously clumsy. MIT’s new robot named “Hermes,” however, moves a bit more gracefully and has human-like reflexes — because it’s hooked up to a human controller. Think Pacific Rim, except Hermes isn’t a giant robot and the pilot doesn’t have to ride inside it, or Real Steel. The school’s Department of Mechanical Engineering’s creation can mimic its “master’s” movements at the same time. For more delicate actions that require the use of its hands and fingers, the human has to use a joystick-like device.

As you’d expect, the machine is much stronger than humans and can be sent to dangerous locations for search and rescue operations. If its pilot can’t follow it closely — say, in places too toxic or dangerous for people — he has to wear a heads-up display to see what it’s seeing. The developers plan to give it “some level of autonomous control” in the future, though, perhaps to make sure it can still function in case its connection with the pilot gets severed.

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Source:
MIT

Tags: hermes, robot

Breathalyzing bike lock keeps tipsy cyclists from riding drunk

You’d be surprised by the amount of damage and havoc that an inebriated bicyclist can inflict just by swerving through traffic, ignoring stop signs or falling off their bikes into the paths of oncoming cars. To prevent this sort of thing from happening, the Alcoho-Lock from Japanese firm KOOWHO combines the functionalities of a breathalyzer and bike lock. It works on the same principle as the ignition locks DUI offenders are often required to install on their cars. You simply blow into a mouthpiece on the underside of the lock and wait for the device to measure the amount of alcohol on your breath. If it’s below the legal limit, the lock releases and you can be on your merry way. If it’s above the legal limit the Alcoho-Lock will totally rat you out, sending a warning text to a family member or friend telling them you’re smashed. That contact will then have the option to remotely unlock the device on your behalf.

Besides being a narc, the Alco-Lock has a few other drawbacks as well. For one, you’ll need to keep it charged — a fully battery works out to about 40 breath tests — and there’s no word on what happens if the battery dies while it’s still locked to your bike. Plus, it’s $250. Yes, for an aluminum-clad bike lock. I mean, the nearly indestructible Kyrptonite Fahgettaboudit retails for less than half that price. And finally, unless you want to blow into the lock every single time you go for a ride, you’re likely going to need to carry a conventional lock in addition to this one. So, what’s the point?

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Alcoho-Lock

Tags: alcohol, alcoholock, bicycle, bikes, DUI